What to say when …

A friendly colleague asks for your opinion of his terrible, time-wasting presentation:

“I appreciate the effort you put into it. But I measure a presentation on whether every minute paid off, and in this case the speech could have been shortened.”

An employee who promised to finish a key project fails to turn it in on time and you must explain this to your boss:

“I had lots of reasons to believe he would finish it on time, so this is really surprising. I didn’t want to micromanage his work, but it appears I pulled back too much. We’ve worked out new deadlines. This time I will monitor his progress more closely.”